"No."
"Then we start with what is actually in the records," Robert said. "A colored line on somebody's drawing is not an interest in land."
He came out the following day with a survey assistant and enough equipment to fill the back of his truck. They worked slowly along the western boundary, checking the old monuments, the fence, and points that predated the subdivision. I walked part of the line with them and showed Robert where the irrigation pipes crossed the former cattle trail. He asked whether I had plans from my father's work, and I took him into the ranch office to look through the metal cabinet.
That cabinet smelled of paper, oil, and the faint mold of old Texas summers. My father had kept deed copies in one drawer, mineral leases in another, and a collection of hand-drawn irrigation maps folded inside manila envelopes. We found a plan from the late 1990s showing where three pipe junctions and a pressure line crossed the western field. Robert spread it on the desk and told his assistant to photograph it before we carried it outside.
He spent three days in the county records, and then returned to the ranch with a thick folder under one arm. He did not sit down when I offered him coffee. He placed the folder on the table and unfolded a modern boundary map next to the original deeds. A red route ran across the sheet like a fresh scratch on an old piece of furniture.
"Daniel, you've got a problem," he said.
I leaned over the map. "How bad?"
"The route they are advertising goes about eighteen hundred feet across your property. I checked the current records, the older records, and the recorded instruments tied to your parcel. I found no easement giving the association, the developer, or the utility company the right to use that route."
"Are you certain?"
"Certain about what I can find in the record," he said. "Somebody could claim an unrecorded right or bring a lawsuit over historical use. But I have not found the legal document they would need to support what they're telling contractors today."
I appreciated the precision of that answer. Robert had never promised me that every question involving land could be settled by one sheet of paper. He was telling me what his investigation showed and where its limits were, which was more useful than the false certainty I had been hearing from Northridge. He tapped the part of the proposed line that crossed the southern irrigation branch and shook his head.
"This is not an empty strip. They would be crossing your water network and cutting the ranch into two working sections. Even if somebody offered you fair money for a legal easement, you'd have engineering costs nobody put on that HOA map."